You're trying to be funny, but you're not succeeding imhoe. "No one ever mentioned the (definite specific) walrus." It's a particular walrus he had in mind. Do you know to which walrus he referred? No. It could be any walrus. He has a specific one in mind, and no one ever mentioned that one to him.

i wonder where the word walrus comes from, since the german version sounds very similar, but has a meaning: it's walross and "ein wal" is "a whale" and "ein ross" is a rather seldom used term for "horse". so actually the animal should be called whalehorse. i actually wonder why the person who named the walross saw a whale and a horse in that animal. if i could mix a horse with a whae it'd probably look quiet different.

kaos

//edited to correct typing mistake

Last edited by kaos_de_moria on Wed Sep 17, 2003 12:31 pm; edited 1 time in total

You get a cookie! According to this site, you've pretty much sussed it out (though they claim Dutch ancestory for the word rather than German, but it's not far off):

Quote:

walrus - 1655, from Du. walrus, which was probably a folk-etymology alteration (by influence of Du. walvis "whale" and ros "horse") of a Scand. word, such as O.N. rosmhvalr "walrus," hrosshvalr "a kind of whale," or rostungr "walrus." O.E. had horschw?l, and later morse, from Lapp morsa or Finnish mursu.

in context to my other post about discourse (i think it's in the parallelogram thread at the end) i wonder now if scotts walrus will look like a real walrus or if he changes it to look like a mix of a whale and a horse we'll know soon enough...

Why must the word come from a non-English source? English is closely related to both German and Dutch (though spelling conventions prevent us from parsing either with any ease).

OE "hwael" + "hors" would yield walors, perhaps. Factor in the Scandinavian influence, and you get "hwael hros" (or /hwal hrOs/ in X-SAMPA), which becomes our very own walrus.

"If someone made an Internet site about it, it has to be true."

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So, now we have a walrus with a stupefied look on its face (let's face it, what walrus doesn't) in a business suit (not a very nice one) carrying a briefcase or a suitcase. What's it doing? Door-to-door sales? Applying for a job? Getting its shoes shined?

But I just did. The walrus. There. I mentioned him again. Perhaps this one should be filled with references to the Lewis Carrol classic "the walrus and the carpenter". Yeah. That'd be neat.

Ummm, It's "Nobody Ever Noticed the Walrus," actually.

Since I bow to no one in my appreciation of Lewis Carroll, I would be very happy to see references to this poem from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There in the next MI. (I'm glad no one doesn't come around very often while I'm appreciating Lewis Carroll, because I always feel foolish bowing to him.)

I like Scott's title illustration for "Walrus" very much. It could be an illustration from a classic children's book from the '50s.

Well so far Mr. McCloud's on the right track. At the least he's already established that there is a walrus. That's leaps and bounds ahead of that Evil that men forget one. Any one else anticipating a Chicken Boo like story?

I like Scott's title illustration for "Walrus" very much. It could be an illustration from a classic children's book from the '50s.

I also thought that it was like a picture book drawing.

Your posting the image here makes me notice that men's vests traditionally have the buttons on the other side from how Scott drew them here. Maybe walrus' vests are just constructed differently?_________________Good morning! That's a nice tnetennba.

I imagine it will happen in a manner reminiscent of a stop-motion film I saw. Things happen, and the walrus is always there. No one notices him. No one stops to help him. He's lonely. He's the world's enemy. He's an SEP field with Marvin's love of the universe.

Sorry for the Douglas Adams references, but not enough to avoid them. If you don't understand, it's all your fault. I am the Walrus; you must do as I bid, accept what I give, and no more.

Well so far Mr. McCloud's on the right track. At the least he's already established that there is a walrus. That's leaps and bounds ahead of that Evil that men forget one. Any one else anticipating a Chicken Boo like story?

That was exactly what I was thinking. But then again, the title seems to imply that they never noticed the walrus at all, not that they never noticed the fact that he's a walrus.

Does anyone else think it's odd that Scott uses transparent gifs for spacing? It used to be that you'd get flamed by the evil overlords of HTML for that sort of thing.

Being that this is one of my own interests, I've noticed that Scott uses a lot of older, out of fashion HTML techniques (no CSS?), but we all know he's a comics author, not a web-design guru. Those two value systems do not align easily, since more "pure" HMTL techniques require one to give up on any sort of control (tyranny, some would say) over the page layout. Yes, there are ways to do all this stuff with HTML and CSS, but they require much more testing and a deep knowledge of the code. Most comics authors don't want to give up the absolute control over the page design that they had in the print world, so they are content to use whatever approach works to force their vision into the browser window rather than seek an ideal, more cleanly-coded and forward compatible solution. (I'm not presuming to speak for Scott on this matter. He knows better than I why he does what he does.)

Related to the rift between webcomic author and website designer, I have noticed some truly horrendous site designs perpetrated by some very talented comics authors. What can explain this? Why do people who are so attuned visually that they can draw beautiful comics fail so spectacularly when designing a web page? I think the answer is an elaboration of what I said above- They do try for beauty but hit a wall with the code where they can't make their vision come out right. The HTML learning curve is such that you can put together a webpage in a vew minutes and have it work, but after a certain point, to understand HTML's elegance, thrift and beauty (tied with CSS), you really have to put in the hours to learn some stuff. If you're working for a page design that looks exatly like you want it to, but you haven't worked with the code enough to know how to do it the "purest" way, you end up with a lot of solutions like transparent spacer .gif files and massive table-controlled layouts, which those in the know tend to look down upon.

Most people just go with what works and most of their audience will never notice.

I could go on about this, but won't- It's really another topic entirely and we can start another thread if anybody wants to discuss it further._________________Good morning! That's a nice tnetennba.